


Catching Up

by lostsometime



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Growth, Empire Kids, Episode Tag, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, crteamhumanweek2019, episode tag: s2e55: Duplicity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21773974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostsometime/pseuds/lostsometime
Summary: Caleb and Beau have a conversation after the fight in the well.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 4
Kudos: 143
Collections: Team Human Week 2019





	Catching Up

Beau takes watch with Caleb the night they spend at the bottom of the well. She doesn’t have to – by now, she trusts his magic enough to know that no one really _has_ to keep watch when they’re in the magic bubble. But Caleb had volunteered to take watch anyway, and Beau had too clear an idea of the sorts of things that might be running through his head to be comfortable leaving him alone with his thoughts.

For two hours they sit in near-silence. Caleb pages absently through his spellbook, though she’s pretty sure he isn’t actually reading. Beau gets through about sixty sit-ups before she gets bored and just lies down on her back, staring up at the faintly shimmering orange dome above them.

After a short while, she sits back up and scoots a little closer to where Caleb is sitting, just at the very edge of the spell’s area. She suspects he’d like to get up and pace, but he knows that if he leaves the dome, the spell will end and leave them all vulnerable, and that’s not an option he’s willing to entertain. Just as she begins to consider starting her sit-up count again, Caleb finally says something.

“You know, the general conception is that succubi are inherently sexual, but that is not the case.” His voice is mild, conversational. If she didn’t know better, Beau might think he was merely sharing an interesting tidbit of information gleaned from one of his books. She’s pretty sure she does know better, though.

“Oh?”

It’s all the encouragement he needs to continue. “Things like that, they use whatever works best to get what they want. Straightforward seduction is usually the easiest, that is why they start with it, but once they get inside your head, they find many different angles to work at. The way you shut it down so completely was very impressive.

These things, they are not _smart_ , exactly, but they have an _instinct_.”

Beau stays silent – she knows he’s talking around his point and it bothers her, makes her feel itchy, but she’s seen Caleb shut down enough times by now to know not to rush him.

“It figured me out right away. What buttons to press. How easy it is to… to make me afraid. Much easier than promises or seduction. Certainly much easier than trying to make me happy.” He shakes his head, a rueful half-smile curling the edge of his mouth. Beau hates it.

“The thing is, she… _it_ , it made me feel like it was the, the only one I could trust not to hurt me.” Caleb catches himself before he goes to rub uncomfortably at his arm, runs his fingers through his hair instead. Lets out a faint breath that could almost be a laugh. “A kind of seduction, I suppose.

I know… Beauregard, I know I am not an easy person to get along with. I know that we have had our… disagreements. But I have never… even at our worst, I never worried you would actually _hurt_ me. Now I know what that feels like, and I don’t – I don’t like it. I don’t like knowing how it feels to, to think that you are a threat to me. I don’t like knowing what it is like to be afraid of you. Or of Jester. Or of Nott.”

“Not Fjord?”

“Ehhh…” He see-saws a hand back and forth in a ‘so-so’ motion. 

Beau attempts to stifle a bark of laughter at that, pulling it back into an inelegant snort. She nudges him with her shoulder companionably and the bleak set to his mouth softens into not-quite-a-smile. She doesn’t know what to say to him, to make this better. She tries to think what Caduceus might say. Something true, probably. She takes a deep breath and gives it a shot.

“I, uh, I don’t know if this helps or anything, but this, today, wasn’t even the most freaked out I’ve ever been over you.”

Caleb chuckles weakly. “No?”

“Nah. Top ten, probably. _Maybe_ top five. Definitely not higher than that, though.”

“What, um… what, when was… the ‘most freaked out’?” He echoes her cadence at the end, the way he does when he’s teasing.

“Okay, first: don’t do that. And, uh, it was… the, uh, the night after the Victory Pit and all.” Beau stumbles, not sure how else to say _‘the night I extorted all your worst secrets out of you’_ without flinching.

Caleb flinches, instead, and she immediately wishes she could take this whole conversation back. _Stuck your foot in it again, what else is new?_ Beau can practically hear Caleb’s barriers slam back up when, instead of continuing the exchange of teasing he just very quietly says, “Oh,” and sinks down into his coat like a turtle retreating into its shell.

“Yeah, I uh --” Beau tries nudging at his shoulder again, trying to get back to a lighter atmosphere. “I was like, eighty percent sure you weren’t gonna bolt without seeing the library, after all that. But uh, the last twenty percent was real worried I was gonna wake up the next morning and you’d be gone. You and Nott both.”

His head comes back up, a look of surprise on his face. “ _That_ was what worried you?”

“Well, I mean… yeah. I would’ve been the only one who knew why you’d gone. I was picturing, like, having to explain to Jester that she wouldn’t be able to play detectives with Nott anymore because of _me._ Because I couldn’t keep my _big fuckin’ mouth_ shut and it freaked you out. She might’ve _cried_. And Molly? Molly was so big on group cohesion and so down on asking anybody any personal questions at all, he’d have been all _‘Oh, I told you so_ ’ or _‘Hey, you suck at being on a team’_ or whatever. And he’d have been right!”

As Beau comes to the end of her brief rant, she sees Caleb looking at her with a sort of fond bemusement. It’s a much better look on him than the awful forced smile from before. Still, when she speaks she can hear her own defensiveness.

“What?”

“Nothing, it is… just, it is… somewhat remarkable. I told you I was a terrible person and a, a murderer and worse, and your biggest worry was that I might run, and then Jester would be sad. You are… it is not the reaction I expected, is all. You are… unexpected. Unusual.”

“Oh.” She’s been called “unusual” and “unexpected” before, mostly by friends of her parents, but somehow it doesn’t sound like an insult coming from him. She doesn’t really know what to do with that.

“And, Beauregard... you do not suck at being on a team. In fact, I am fairly sure none of us would be alive tonight without you. You are… you are _very good_ at being on a team. On this team, at least.”

 _That_ is very clearly a compliment, and Beau immediately finds a reason to look very intently at the other side of the cavern. Her eyes burn. _Must be fucking dusty under this well_ , she thinks, and knows it’s bullshit even as she thinks it.

“Only one that matters,” she says gruffly, through the sudden tightness in her throat. She’s a bit startled when Caleb’s hand pats her shoulder, just once, very lightly.

“ _Ja_. Only one that matters.”


End file.
